Creston sporting events to be streamed online

Creston/O-M junior Spencer Wray controls his match with Kuemper Catholic's Tim Sibbel. Wray
scored a 19-7 major dec. over Sibbel. He also picked up a pin in his match against Lewis Central's
Nate Storey, helping the Panthers to two Hawkeye 10 Conference dual wins on Tuesday. The
Panthers host Harlan in a key Hawkeye 10 Conference dual today, and then host the Panther
Invitational on Saturday.

By SCOTT VICKER
CNA sports editor • svicker@crestonnews.com

Creston sports fans will soon have a new way to follow Panther athletics, even those far and away.

Starting with Friday night’s home boys basketball game against Council Bluffs Abraham Lincoln, Creston Middle School teacher Jon Thomson will be broadcasting certain Creston High School sporting events on www.highschoolcube.com.

“We just did a trial run on Dec. 16 with a JV game before break,” Thomson said. “These are the first two real varsity events we’ll be streaming. Coach (Todd) Jacobson and I are going to start doing more games.”

Thomson will also be broadcasting Saturday’s Panther Invitational wrestling tournament.

He learned of the idea in early December when he was planning to attend the wrestling tournament at Dallas Center-Grimes.

“Someone told me it was going to be on the highschoolcube.com,” Thomson said. “I said I’d never even heard of that. Sure enough, they were live streaming the wrestling tournament. I thought, well if DC-G is doing this, why can’t Creston? I called the Chicago home office and they have a rep here in Iowa, and he set me up.”

Thomson said live-streaming the events doesn’t require any high-tech equipment. All it takes is an iPhone or iPad with an internet connection.

Future plans

Once Thomson and Jacobson work out any bugs in the system, the plan is to get more people involved, thus being able to broadcast more games and potentially other school activities.

“My ultimate goal is to start getting kids involved with the experience,” Thomson said. “Kids are always going to away meets and some people can’t make it. If I can get kids involved, they’re already going to away meets, so we can start broadcasting them.”

Eventually adding in pre-game and post-game shows with interviews is another component Thomson would eventually like to add into the mix.

“I want to start a broadcasting club,” he said. “I think a lot of kids would be interested in that kind of thing. I know some kids are interested in when that will start, when it will happen. I’m in the stage of what’s it going to take to get this thing going?”

Thomson noted that several schools on High School Cube use the program as a way to broadcast the school’s announcements, turning the announcements into television news style broadcast.

“If it starts building, I don’t want to do just sports,” Thomson said. “We can do choir and band. Then they archive it on the web site, so if you’re not able to make it live, you can go there and watch it. It’s there indefinitely.”

There are endless possibilities of ways the program can be used, Thomson said.

“You can tie it in with your speech class, your drama class, your social studies class with the news,” he said.

Starting off

But for starters, Thomson will be broadcasting select CHS events starting with the basketball game on Friday and wrestling tournament on Saturday.

With Saturday’s wrestling tournament, Thomson said he will likely try to emphasize the Creston/O-M wrestlers throughout the day.

Fans can see what upcoming events Thomson plans to broadcast by going to www.highschoolcube.com and searching for Creston High School in the search box. Once at the Creston High School page, fans can find the upcoming broadcast schedule and archived broadcasts.

Fans can also create a free account, which will allow them to receive notifications when a new Creston High School event has been scheduled to be broadcast.